ska reporting production has stopped
https://twitter.com/skabooshka/statu...55315331006465

and photos of the fremont plant under nummi 10 years ago vs now
https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/stat...36626456240128

???
Tesla has an excellent nationwide charging network that works nearly perfectly. No other electric car has any charging network and the private networks are clustered around big cities with no high speed charging in between cities to make long distance trips possible. See post #4125 for previous discussion.

Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 2-3 hours is actually a very pleasant way of driving unless you are in a huge hurry.

Agree that for a lot of situations a hybrid is a more convenient solution for many people.

This is level 2 coverage in the US and Canada. It's orders of magnitude larger than Tesla's network.



This is ChaDeMo DC ultra fast charging (1/2 an hour to fill up a car, supercharger level):



The east and west coast and major population centers are fully covered. Only the sparsely populated middle of the country is poorly covered with "superchargers", and they're more than adequately serviced by level 2 for the tiny percent of car owners who care about cross country trips.

Tesla has an advantage along a few coast to coast highways, but is far behind on ultra fast charging locations in populated areas.

Thanks Tooth

I think a lot of Tesla owners are trying to convince themselves this situation is a positive when it is clearly a negative. Being forced to stop is a negative, not a positive. If it was really that pleasant every gas-burning car would be stopping for completely unnecessary 20-30 minute breaks too. Without being forced to stop, most people will choose to go longer, for obvious reasons.

I do agree with you it can be a very pleasant way of driving, but it has to be done intentionally from the start and only really resonates with a small portion of people. Instead, most Tesla owners are trying to justify their over-priced purchase and deluding themselves into thinking an inferior technology is actually ideal.

I do think Tesla have advantages in the following areas:

1. Superior battery and battery pack design. Tesla use better cooling and smarter design. They're a pure battery car company and it shows. In the real world this means extra range and more reliable faster charging (the leaf for example doesn't cool well enough for multiple 30 minute charges). I don't believe they have price advantages however, if anything, this comes at a cost. They also have minor advantages in electric drive trains.
2. Nicer, cooler software
3. Nicer aesthetics/external shell design
4. Flagship performance models to drive excitement/sales/lies
5. Understanding what consumers want to be excited about buying an EV. In this sense, a mega-beta billionaire who likes sports cars is perfect to lead.

Everything else that Tesla does ranges from fairly behind to far behind.

Behind:

- Competence in logistics

Far behind:

- Manufacturing competence
- Cost control
- Process control
- Build quality (gaps, leaks, rattles, etc)
- Interior quality

Clown-level behind

- Serviceability
- Reliability

If Musk had been less of an assclown/grandiose narcissist who thought he could do everything better than the majors rather than a few things better and the rest merely try to catch up/replicate, Tesla would have had a real shot. Instead Musk thought his (non-existent) kid genius could do genius-magic with robots, outdoing all global manufacturing and not requiring beta testing, until everything fell into a big heap of irredeemable failure that we have now. His extraordinary lack of intelligence and competence is why Tesla are in the mess they are in now.

Best in Class
-Autopilot*
-Rockets

*Full Autopilot coming in 2018

This sort of statement is insane. This is a massive problem with pure electric vehicles for the vast majority of car-buyers. It would not at all be pleasant for me, because even if I wanted to stop every 2-3 hours I'd almost certainly choose to stop at places that are more pleasant than wherever the hell the charging station is set up.

Its statements like this and the one by the guy that claimed he'd budgeted for fixing paint damage on his BRAND NEW CAR that are big clues on how delusional some people are on Tesla.

Level 2 charging is meaningless for long distance travel. And a Tesla can use those level 2 chargers. Level 2 means drive for 2-3 hours, charge for 4-6 hours.

Having level 3 chargers in big cities is not helpful. The need is for level 3 chargers properly placed in between cities so you can get from one to another. Needs to be multiple stalls so they aren't full, reliable, and properly spaced. Tesla has that. Whatever those green dots represent does not come close.

Definitely not saying that charging is a positive. As has been mentioned many times in this thread, there are a lot of awesome things about electric cars. The question is whether the minor negative of charging outweighs the many positives of an electric car. my point is that the charging is a very minor negative for me

I'm not sure what your driving patterns are, but here are mine.
1. Drive less than 200 miles in a day on 95% of days. On these days an electric car is slightly more convenient than a gas car, because you just charge at home every night and you don't have to stop at a local gas station. This probably saves some trivial amount of time per month, like 10 minutes.

2. Once a month or so take a weekend road trip to somewhere 2-4 hours away. Lets say 3 hours each way for an example. In this situation I will usually have to stop once on the way there and once on the way back. Average stop 20 minutes. If I was driving a gas car I likely would have had to stop once for 5 minutes to get gas at some point before, during, or after the trip. So total of 35 minutes per month added.

3. Go somewhere more than 6 hours drive away - I fly. The car does not matter.

Net net the electric car costs me about 25 minutes per month. Weighed against the positives of the electric car that is a big win for me.

I suspect that the BFI group is a younger crowd that takes 20 hour road trips where you drive 5 hours in a stretch to save a few bucks over flying. But most people I know that are 35+ either do short road trips or fly. and people 35+ are the ones buying 30k plus cars.

Pretzel, I'm from a place where longer trips (4-6 hours) are pretty common in the Summer. I suspect there are lots of other places where that is true too.

But even using your numbers, that's a pretty big deal! And its not just the extra time on a standard trip - it's also the planning / thinking you need to do before hand. I read your trip report from earlier and you mentioned having to plan your whole route out ahead of time. What if you'd seen a cool detour along the way? Oh well, can't do it because we don't have the charge to spare. What if the highway is closed and you have to take a detour? Oh, that's kind of stressful. You mentioned the stress of not knowing if the hotels you were staying at were going to actually have any charging stations available. That sucks too.

So, it's not even just about the annoyance of extra time on a trip. It's significantly less flexible (vast areas of the country will still not be practical for an electric car with a 200 mile range) and stress inducing for long trips. And when people are investing in one of the most expensive things they'll ever buy - they're not going to be particularly excited to give up this flexibility and take on this added stress.

The market is limited to people that really care about electric vehicles and fairly wealthy people that can afford to have another car that gives them the flexibility they care about for longer trips.

And even that market is going to be eaten into by competitors. The big rise of hybrid plug-in options is going to steal people with their ability to fall back on the massive gas infrastructure we already have when they need it.

Wow just when shorts starting to celebrate Musk calls in some favors and we get hit with counter punch $285 +8.5%.

Just to be clear about what is being debated. Initially I was talking about the difficulty of a medium to long distance trip right now in a Tesla vs a non-Tesla EV. To me that is a slam dunk that the trip is way easier in a tesla. I think any informed consumer would give it a lot of weight if choosing between EVs right now.

Then I was called insane (or maybe a cuck with overweight ADD kids) for saying that for me, taking a trip in an EV was not much less convenient than using a gas car. You brought up some reasonable situations where using an EV would be a significant inconvenience. Comparing an EV to a gas car is very dependent on a lot of variables like driving habits, ability/willingness to plan, EV infrastructure along the routes you take, etc.

I still maintain that for ME the EV is hardly inconvenient at all. And I think that a significant percentage of people who are in the market for 35k-75k cars are in the same situation as I am as where the EV would not be very inconvenient. I admit I have not done any research on exactly who buys cars in this price range so maybe I'm wrong but that is my gut feeling.

My point is that the Tesla is a horrible experience for any sort of medium to long distance trip. And there are a lot of very real EV alternatives (plug-in hybrids) coming to market that don't have that horrible experience.

So if you think Tesla has a big advantage because of their charging network - you have to realize that plug-in hybrids have a MASSIVELY bigger advantage because they can use existing gas infrastructure which is way more prevalent and way more convenient.

And, yes, I think its insane if you think a significant percentage of people in the market for a 35k-75k car are willing to live with the massive disadvantages of a pure EV car right now. Especially if we're looking at the total North American market.

I've owned this car for 2.5 years and done dozens of medium distance trips (and one very long distance trip) I completely disagree that it is a horrible experience. Will just have to agree to disagree on this one unless you have some data showing otherwise.

Your data shows otherwise (as well as common sense)!

This is not an acceptable mass market experience regardless of if or how much better the Tesla network is from its pure EV competitors.

I actually experienced all of those things and none of them were terrible. LOL @ 10 minutes of planning for a 9 day trip, or walking a few minutes, making an experience terrible.

How much stopping time do you expect you would have if you were driving 7 hours in a day? When I was in my early 20's me and some buddies would drive from college to atlantic city and it was 8 hours, we would just stop for food once and gas a couple times. But as an adult if I am doing a long road trip I schedule in some stops so I don't feel terrible when I arrive at my destination. Probably at least 30-60 minutes of stopping for 5-7 hours of driving, maybe more if eating takes a while. so stopping 1.25 or 1.5 hours in 5-7 hours isn't that much different.

I do agree that for very long road trips , which I'm defining as more than 5 or 6 hours each way, the downside of an electric car becomes more pronounced. But in the past 10 years that was the only trip I've taken that is more than 6 hours each way. the rest of the time I have flown for long distances.

I also agree that hotel charging sucks. I usually plan trips assuming no hotel charging and consider it a bonus if I get any. With good hotel charging the medium length trips would be a breeze.

I would guess that a lot of people age 18-30 would agree with you that these stops are a big pain, but I think most people 35+ would agree with me that these stops are fine or maybe even preferable.

I appreciate your experiences and thoughts but I think you're completely wrong about this and don't know what you're talking about.

This is the East Coast, Tesla superchargers on the left vs equivalent (30 min/80%) DC superchargers that aren't Tesla on the right. In sheer quantity, non-Tesla kicks the crap out of Tesla. There is ample coverage along highways and biways, better than Tesla:



Tesla has better coverage in the far less trafficked more rural areas. But most of those are overnight trips and there are tons of level 2 for that when you stop. Apart from that the Tesla supercharger network is inferior for most use cases. I think you're drinking the Kool Aid. The West Coast, Florida, the South, all look similar in coverage to the above, with non Tesla superchargers beating Tesla superchargers for number and spacing along highways and in cities.

Pretzel posting on-point and with admirable patience, as usual.

jj, what do you think are the plug-in hybrids that are going to overtake the Model 3 anytime soon? I remember there was a plug-in Prius years ago, and no one really seemed to care about it (granted it was expensive and had very low range, if I remember correctly).

I guess I’ll leave the pretzel argument here since he demolished me with his argument about 35+ year olds that love to take 20 minute breaks every 90 minutes at random rest stops and take tightly controlled pre-planned family trips with no room for unexpected detours.

There’s a whole bunch of models out now and more coming out soon. The Prius, Volt, Honda has one. I was looking half seriously a few months ago and saw way more models then I realized. Falling in love with the charging network of Tesla is pretty ridiculous if you’re competing with gasoline infrastructure.

What happens if TSLA files bankruptcy? Do puts automatically cash as though you bought at 0 and exercised, or do you have to scrounge up TSLAQ at whatever it's trading at and manually exercise?

3 comments about those pictures
1. I said that non tesla chargers are clumped in big cities. You then countered with a map showing the most populated area in the US with multiple major cities. Of course there are clumps of chargers there. The Tesla chargers are thoughtfully spaced out so that even though there are less dots, the area is very well covered by Tesla chargers.
2. Each of those tesla dots is a bank of 6-20 chargers that are very reliable. They are located near highways on the exits. A lot of those non tesla dots are single chargers of varied reliability. Many of them are not located somewhere convenient to the highway.
3. The Tesla network is very easy to use. I suspect that those non-tesla green dots represent 4-6 different networks that all have their own card or app or login or fob or payment plan. To maintain accounts with all of them would take a lot of advance planning, much more than 10 minutes.

I would bet that the tesla network can get you from any medium or large city (pop 75k+) in the US to any other medium to large city in the US (except for north dakota) without a major detour, with very reliable chargers that are essentially always available and easy to use. Even adding all the other networks together they can't come close to that. That's a big deal to most US EV buyers.

Im just gonna put this here


http://www.crazydaysandnights.net/20...-them.html?m=1

Well i looked it up and Riley's divorce and the movie dont line up unless Summer House was somehow tbe movie which doesnt reay fit the timing


Ok i admit it. I am addicted to Tesla news nowadays

Extreme pinch of salt but; no tweets from Grimes since start of August.